Dana White: UFC Is A Short Term Gig

Dana White is getting sick of all the hoopla regarding UFC pay. Fighters like Tim Kennedy, John Cholish, and Jacob Volkmann have been far from complimentary towards the pay scale of UFC fighters and its caused quite the headache for Dana White and Co.

White talked to Bleacher Report about how fighters shouldn’t be looking for long term employment as a UFC fighter:

“This isn’t a long-term f****** job. You don’t come into the UFC thinking, man, I’m going to stay here until I’m 65 and then I’m going to retire, get a pension and do this, that and the other. This is a f****** short-term gig.”

…

“You have a window of opportunity that’s about this big, if you’re lucky. If you’re talented enough, and you get in there and you do as many amazing things as you can in front of as many people as you can and make as much money as you can, and enough contacts and this and that, so when that inevitable day that will finally come when it’s over you put yourself in a great position where you can move on and do better things, and if you figure it out right, you don’t ever have to work again. Who the f*** on this planet doesn’t understand that?”

If you plan on becoming a fighter and making your way to the UFC, it might be smart to go the route of someone like Jake Shields or Shane Carwin. Shields was going to college while competing as a fighter, just in case fighting doesn’t fall through and Carwin had a full time engineering job that paid his bills.

The UFC is a business but according to the man, joining the UFC is no long term solutution. Unless you are Matt Hughes, Chuck Liddell, or Forrest Griffin.

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